[PhoneGap Build] Future Plugin Support

There have been a lot of threads on this forum about plugin support in PhoneGap
Build. As you may know, we released support for the ChildBrowser plugin a
couple of months back, and our plan is to develop and support a few more
plugins in-house, before developing a system to allow users to develop and
deploy plugins.

While our work is ongoing, I'd like to start this thread as one place we can
list all the plugins that PG Build users are interested in.

Here's a list of the ones I've seen crop up:

Facebook Connect

Local Notifications

Push (Remote) Notifications

iAds (iOS only)

Flurry Analytics

Barcode Scanner

SMS

If there are other plugins you're interested in, please reply here so we can
keep tabs on what we should be looking at.

Our immediate goals are to improve the stability and performance of the PGB
service and release a couple of top-secret features, but we know plugins are a
key feature for our existing PhoneGap Build users, and we're determined to build
robust, cross-platform support.

Definately a +1 for IAds. I will not be able to use Build before this is implemented.

Hopefully in the future, we can describe the configs ourself, and you guys can focus on something else :)

Also it seems like https://build.phonegap.com/docs/plugins the contribute section needs to be updated. It is (not to me at least) clear if I can create the configuration files for my plugins and then automatically run the build.

Like I said, FROM YOUR RESPONSES. If you're developing for other platforms its not obvious. Hence, my statement wasn't out of line. For you to say that you can't use PG Build because these plugins aren't available is quite whinny. PhoneGap's competitors do not have plugins solutions so I guess you're not making apps at all...

Wow @lawgurl, please take a breath, no need to respond so fiercely here (same with your other post on page 2), we're all trying to help each other to be more successful no?

OT: I'm also developing on multiple platforms and totally agree with you Christian, particularly the barcode scanner would be extremely very useful (and more people in this thread seem to think so).
Also Google Analytics would be very useful! I could imagine just adding the unique GA-code in the config.xml to have at least basic analytics, not necessarily with custom vars right of the bat.
Hopefully we can get an update of new features from the PG team! :)

The plan is to develop more plugins that can be deployed to PhoneGap Build, get an idea of what data and metadata we need about the plugin to install and configure a plugin, and develop the spec accordingly. As we haven't had time to do substantial work on other plugins, the spec hasn't evolved yet.

LocalNotifications are beyond current Cordova API. They are background notifications that can be fired even when the App is not running, and show up in the device "Status Bar", whereas Push usually requires internet access on the device to get notifications. Example usage is an App that reminds you of upcoming Birthdays and Anniversaries. Enter info once and it will remind you every year, no internet connection required, no need to open and check the App every day.

+1 for Local Notifications!

@Andrew Lunny & PhoneGap Build Team: why not create a Github Repo & spec that users can contribute Plugin code to for PhoneGap Build? Then it is a matter of QA and security testing instead of needing to re-write each of the plugins yourself.

I've just started using PhoneGap Build to develop my first ever mobile apps and already I absolutely love it. I love how it has opened up a new world of app development which previously was hidden away behind complicated SDKs and environments like XCode which I have no desire to learn.

Every new thing I learn about PhoneGap blows me away, and I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on these new plugins when they are available.

For me, favourites would be (1) Push Notifications and (2) Facebook Connect.

I have implemented PushWoosh as a push notification solution. It was very easy to implement and works nicely. They have indicated a strong desire to work with Build on implementing their plugin. Why can't a push notification solution be incorporated in Build?

Do you know if their technique will work in Phonegap? I've been running into lots of issues. The main one being that the watchlist app uses watchlist.com as the domain for their facebook app, but in phonegap of course the domain is the local file system. Perhaps the Sencha Touch facebook connect technique is only for web-based apps. Any thoughts?

Ah I see, unfortunately I haven't had much experience trying to get it to work on local but perhaps it's necessary to set up a subdomain to receive the requests. Can't say I am an expert in it, but let me know if you workaround it.

Not sure about FB connect or watchlist.com, but in general,
you might need to add non-local domains to the access section of cordova.xml or phonegap.xml as well as the Cordova.plist file for ios (with OpenAllWhitelistURLsInWebView set to true).